ON THE OUTDOORS.

Watchers' intensive search strictly for birds

Perched on a thin, bare, dead tree in the McKee Marsh at the Roy Blackwell Forest Preserve in DuPage County, the red body of a cardinal stood out against the lush green of spring.

Only moments before, veteran bird watcher Jody Zamirowski had noted how even the average person likes cardinals, how the average person who doesn't even notice birds appreciates them.

"A lot of people like red birds," said Zamirowski. "Most people don't see more than five types of birds--pigeons, ducks, cardinals, blue jays, crows. They're not on their radar."

Last Saturday, Zamirowski, husband Jerry and a handful of other birdwatchers joined volunteers statewide for the annual Illinois Spring Bird Count. The birdwatchers flooded Illinois' 102 counties to produce an inventory of the species and volume of birds living around the state.

Former Illinois Department of Natural Resources avian expert Vern Kleen created the count in 1972, still runs it and sends the results to the Illinois Audubon Society, the Illinois Ornithological Society and the Illinois Natural History Society.

The count, Kleen said, usually accounts for about 260 different species, but more are seen around the state in a year. Illinois has millions of birds. The count for the daylong activity hits about 500,000.

"We only touch the surface," Kleen said.

Jim Phillips of Orland Park has participated in the Blackwell area for 22 years. The Zamirowskis have been with him nearly as long.

The group began at the marsh at 6 a.m.. After three hours, the seven-member team had sighted a clay-colored sparrow, unusual for the area, and a blue-gray gnatcatcher nest in a white oak tree.

While the others explored another part of the park, Phillips picked up a high-powered telescope for a second visit to the marsh a half-mile trail walk away. He hoped to identify better what an early layer fog had hidden.

Phillips erected the scope on a tripod at a wooden platform.

Soon he had identified Least sandpipers, redwing blackbirds, a great blue heron, Canada geese, blue-winged teal, spotted sandpipers, a semipalmated plover, pectoral sandpipers and a solitary sandpiper. Phillips then rejoined the team a couple of miles away. Roger Rzepka, who has participated in the count since 1992, said he just likes looking at birds.

"There are some birds I haven't seen," he said. "My nemesis bird--and every birder has one--is an avocet."

The birders never know what is in store for them.

This particularly cool spring apparently delayed the arrival of certain species. One year they saw a white-faced ibis, which had no business being in Illinois.

"They're usually on the Texas Gulf Coast," Jerry Zamirowski said. "They don't get much farther north than that."

The appearance of an unlikely suspect easily excites birders.

If someone reports sighting a rare species, they are on it. Many keep life lists. Many keep track of how many they see in a day or a year.

Last year, the book "The Big Year," enthralled readers with the story of three birdwatchers who attempted to record the highest number of birds seen in a calendar year in U.S. history.

Bob Fisher, regional compiler for the DuPage area in the Spring Bird Count, pursued an Illinois Big Year in 2004 with his wife Karen.

They drove 24,000 miles around the state seeking as many varieties of birds as possible between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31. Bob Fisher identified 322, Karen 316.

"It was exhilarating, but exhausting," Fisher said.

Kleen said "anything above 300 is phenomenal."

No one at the Blackwell Forest Preserve was going to see 300 bird species in a day.

Yet the diversity was impressive: a turkey vulture, a Baltimore oriole, a prairie warbler and then one of the true highlights, a rose-breasted grosbeak resting on some small branches high above a path.

Although they did not need them this time, some birdwatchers carried iPods with indexed recordings of birds' singing voices for verification help--a birdwatcher's greatest hits album of sorts.